manchild wrote:MitchellUK wrote:Colour me unimpressed. He's got the size and physical abilities, but he's just not that kind of player. Whether he's reigned in by the tactics or something, I don't know. But I know that if there was a 50-50 ball to be won, I'd take the likes of Essien, Fletcher, Mascherano, Gattuso to win it ahead of him every time.
Go back and get 1999 Patrick Vieira and put him on this Arsenal team, and they're winning trophies, not coming up short every year.
It's all just opinion but I get the feeling you've picked one of our best players and labled him the problem. For mine, there's no problem with any of our starting 11 (except perhaps Clichy) but a few of the backups aren't good enough. Squillaci and Miquel, Denilson, Rosicky, Arshavin. I bet if those guys were better we'd have lost less games this season.
I'm not saying Song is the problem, I am saying he is not the solution. He's an excellent player, but he doesn't provide what I feel Arsenal's midfield needs, and that is some genuine steel. What Arsenal have is a squad full of technically gifted footballers. They all have great touch and technique. What the team needs is just an out-and-out bruiser in the middle of the pitch. A guy who is going to spend 90 minutes chasing down loose balls and winning 50-50 tackles, getting stuck in and protecting the rest of his midfield and the defense. Think of the Man Utd teams of the 1990s an early 2000s - they had guys like Giggs, Sharpe, Kanchelskis, and later Beckham and Scholes, to provide the passing, the creativity, and the attacking threat from deep. They complimented those players with the likes of Paul Ince, Roy Keane and Nicky Butt, men who made it their mission to cover all the grass between each 18-yard box, to make tackles and win the ball, to press the opponents and start the defending from high up the pitch.
Song, IMO, is somewhere in between those types of player. He's a jack-of-all-trades, master of none - he will mix it up, but not in the same way Darren Fletcher or Rino Gattuso will. He can also pick out a nice pass, but he's no Cesc Fabregas or Paul Scholes. There's no doubt he can do a great job for Arsenal, but he's not going to be the enforcer of that team. When teams like Blackburn and Bolton get physical with Arsenal, they don't have a player on the pitch to dish some of the same treatment back. There should still be a place for him in the team, but there needs to be some extra, serious muscle in there with him.
+ 
= 
